Spring 2023

Weekend Travels

To celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary, my husband planned a secret overnight getaway. I was told only to bring hiking gear and something nice to wear out to dinner. Our first stop was the Monteluce Winery just outside of Dahlonega, Georgia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One of the perks of now living in the North Atlanta area is that there are so many fun things to explore just within an hour or so. Getting to the mountains or hills and good hiking trails is a simple matter—just run up the freeway to a jumping off spot. The Winery, about 45 minutes away, is a delightful North Georgia take on a Tuscan villa and winery. It is a place I visited the past summer with my children so that Brad and I could celebrate our July birthdays after the death of my father. We four, Brad, his wife Jen, Cameron, and I thoroughly enjoyed our hike, winetasting, and extended lunch of burrata caprese, grilled bread, and pizza. So, once my husband and I pulled into the parking lot, I had some idea of what to expect.

We went on the wine hike with four other couples guided by Henry, a slight young man with a whisp of a mustache who recently graduated from the University of North Georgia with studies in biology—plants and insects, as he put it. He showed us the vats and the machines for turning grapes into wine, quickly explaining the different ways red and white wines are produced, the oak vats and the metal vats that line the great production room.

Then he led us through the vineyard for the beginning of the hike. At the end of February, the leaves and grapes have not yet appeared, leaving only the pruned bushes, gnarled, stark branches trained to spread out in a T shape, like short, pained crucifixions. They put me in mind of the ending of Cherrie Moraga’s play, “Heroes and Saints,” where the bodies of children who had died of the cancers and deformities caused by the pesticides in California’s Imperial Valley were hung by other children on the twisted grape vines in a public display of protest. The Georgia vines were not as pernicious, the protective white netting that will keep birds and deer from gobbling the grapes rolled like white bands marching along the gentle hills of the vineyard. The ducks swimming in the pond nearby, one of them named by Henry, will be the beneficiaries of dropped or spoiled grapes once the growing and picking seasons begin.

From the fields, Henry led us down an easy path to the Etowah River, which runs along the Monteluce property. Most of the trees had not popped their spring leaves. The ground was covered, littered with the dry brown leaves of the fall and the trees’ branches spread out their bare arms against the crisp, bright sky. A few evergreens, pines, sentinels of green stood out among their gray-brown fellows. Here and there patches of bright yellow daffodils dotted the forest floor, promising the return of spring and sun and warmth. A forsythia coming into delicate bloom shyly announced the coming season.

The shallow river, burbling around and over rocks, beckoning reflection, tempted one to reach into it on this cold day. The section of the river that runs along Monteluce property is stocked with trout, and feeding bins hang from the trees to assure success for the fly fishing sponsored and organized by the property, for a price.

After the short walk, we were back at the winery for the wine tasting that goes with the experience. Henry shed his coat to reveal a t-shirt that read “Wine Hike Survivor.” Funny. The real endurance, I discovered, was the tasting. We each got 5 2-ounce pours of the estate wine. Now, I like a glass or two of wine, but the 10 ounces plus a sip or two of my husband’s wines before he poured his tastes off the deck, really did a number on me. We ordered only a 3-cheese plate, which was delicious, but it did not count for lunch (husband had thought we would go to brunch afterwards). The tasting was slow, with Henry having to take everyone’s orders and serve each table himself. So, the tasting lasted over an hour; by the time we left, I had to hold onto hubby to walk out of there, now clearly past brunch time.

The last time he had to lead me out of a place, me holding onto him to steady my wobbly self, occurred when I got heat exhaustion in Big Bend National Park in West Texas. It was April of 2022, our last spring in Texas, and I wanted to go to Big Bend one more time, to camp out under the vast, quiet sky and hike the stark trails. We have done this before.

But this April seemed hotter and drier than it had on past ventures. By the time we got up, had some breakfast, got ourselves ready, and drove to the trailhead that would lead us across a tree-less desert to some petroglyphs, it was late morning. The trail out to the petroglyphs on columns of rock that stand stark against the bare terrain is about 2 miles. We took our time along the narrow, flat trail, stopped for water breaks, and then had a sandwich lunch at the end point, sitting in the shade of the chunky rocks.

Directional signs and animal-like scriggles plus a date of 1846 had been etched into the rocks. They must have been signposts for wanderers, travelers of the desert.

On the way back to the car, 2 miles away, I started to feel woozy, to look for shade to sit in, even considering in my delusional mind the undersides of short, purple-tinged cacti as possible resting spots. I just couldn’t keep going on my own, so I first grabbed my husband’s hand to pull me along and then crooked my finger in the loops of his backpack to keep going. A stranger, a kind fellow hiker, saw my distress and loaned me his straw hat—my baseball cap was not sufficient. He then contacted the Park Rescue people who came for me with a silver-coated umbrella and herded me to their vehicle where they checked my vital signs and re-hydrated me. 

Luckily, I recovered fairly well, but we had to fold up our tent and find an air-conditioned motel in the nearby (by Texas standards) Sanderson, the Desert Air Motel, one of those motels from the mid-twentieth century where you park your car just outside your room.  

Dinner at the one restaurant still open, a little place specializing in tacos and brisket, and fries with plenty of salt for me. As soon as we walked in the place, small with red-checked plastic table coverings, I saw one of my students from the university who had been hiking with her parents. I must have looked horrific, stunned and pale from exhaustion. 

So, I have wobbled myself out of two situations, holding on to husband to get myself to some reprieve, cool motel for the heat exhaustion and food, finally, at the Bourbon Street Grill in Dahlonega, Georgia for the 5+ pours of wine.  Such seems to be the way of my adventures. Interestingly, while my face was sun-and-wind burned from sitting out on the winery’s patio drinking wine, the only sunburn I had from the Big Bend venture was on the top ridge of my arm that was hanging on to the leading backpack.